Notice: Overall structure preserved, as well as original source code, images and other resources. Scripts, pop-ups and other specialities may or may not function in your WAP browser/emulator. Some links may be broken, changed, replaced or dead.

“wap.sonnet – microbe.4/wap.art” was a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) based artistic project for GSM (Global System of Mobile Communications) WAP mobile phones only. It was available via micro WAP browsers at the following address: tagtag.com/soNet

“Over the last few years, Igor Štromajer (Ljubljana) has developed several interactive web art projects. ‘0.html’, for example, operates with a well known repertoire from computer games and the Internet: Upon entering, the user is confronted with warning messages hinting at limited access (‘Access denied’) and is asked to enter a password. If choosing the right one, s/he is permitted access to the different levels of ‘0.html’: The Body Observation Section, The Communication Area, The Plain of Provocative Intelligence and The Archives of Conditions. All of these levels are linked to sound files. Jozip Broz Tito speaks to the nation, the US President explains the geopolitical role of the United States, Kraftwerk counts reversely and suddenly there is Neil Armstrong’s voice from the year 1969, telling about the great leap for humanity. ‘0.html’ is an archive of historical techno imagination, world politics and a grain of melancholy. At the end of the tour through this complex project, Štromajer confronts the visitor with the following words: ‘Internet is the most primitive medium ever’.”Inke Arns about 0.HTML (Leonardo Electronic Almanach, MIT Press, 2000)

If you use better machines (like MAC / 15″ or 17″ monitor / higher resolution) you can also enter the project – only the graphical proportions will be different.
A sound card is required. You need to have RealAudio installed on your computer. Your software must support *.au, *.ra, *.ram and *.wav sound files. If your system does not support RealAudio format, download and install the RealAudio Player before entering the project.

There is no need (in any situation) to press BACK or FORWARD on your browser inside the project. The project is self-organised to lead you safely through many possibilities. If you will not be able to find a hypertext or hypergraphic for continuation press RELOAD on your browser.

Entering the project requires the basic knowledge about browsers and Internet – but there is just one suggestion: After you have downloaded the animation and are in the process of downloading the sound file, press RELOAD on your browser to re-animate the animation. You can play the sound file again. Wait for each animation to be downloaded (Document: Done).

If you are getting any kind of error messages during the project, it’s because of your browser (task did not call WSACleanup etc.), not because of this project. In this case exit the project, restart your browser and re-enter the project again.

Stromajer’s artworks have included street performances, time-based net art projects and Internet movies as well as “megapathetic symphonies” and digital art. His recent navigational digital web movie, sprinkling menstrual navigator [shown right and below] combines movies with written instructions that are alternately philosophical (“enjoy your sadness”), pragmatic (“enter by clicking enter signs”), or a synthesis of the two (“free your mind and the rest will follow”). The viewer then manipulates the work by clicking on individual film sequences. The resulting “short stories” rely on popular culture and individual (subjective) associations to create their full content.

Other of Stromajer’s recent projects also use the tools and the potential of the Internet (design, interactivity, connectivity, delay) to create conceptual art. The artist’s earlier web piece 0.html uses a format basic to many computer games (password demands, warning signs, game-level choices) to lead to various facets of the work, each with a sound file: Tito addressing his nation, a U.S. president discussing the role of the United States in world politics, Neil Armstrong’s voice extolling his great leap for mankind as he lands on the moon, etc.” At the end of the project, Stromajer leaves the visitor with the rather perplexing statement: “Internet is the most primitive medium ever.” Andreas Broeckmann has called 0.html “an archive of historical techno-imagination, world politics and a grain of melancholy.

interno/inferno is a web art project [not documentary] dedicated to the [G]reat [T]eacher and [C]osmonaut [GTC] Dragan Živadinov. its purpose is to re/create his virtual and artificial:
psych/o[gram]
physi/o[gram]
art/o[gram]
it is constructed as an interactive web art project where internauts can co-re/create his virtual life and fiction artworks.

This net.artwork deals with loneliness and communication and associates the loneliness that one can experience in cyberspace, behind one’s computer window and space loneliness through the emblematic figures of Gagarin and Terechkova, being the only human “there” at a time, with no one to share the extraordinary moments they were living. In Štromajer’s view, the two cosmonauts are the Adam and Eve of our new era. In this work, Gagarin and Terechkova become kinds of icons, part of a saga and of real history. Through them and their symbolic value, space has become part of history, of our life, something “usual”. – Annick Bureaud

my name is yury alekseyevich gagarin. i am alone. it hurts.
in my spacecraft, vostok 1, i travelled once around the earth on a flight lasting 108 minutes. because she did not know what the effects of loneliness on me might be, my e-motions were controlled entirely from earth.
you are like her. control me, please.

b.ALT.ica takes the visitor into an imaginary realm, offering the possibility of encountering the end of time, and to move about in a place of no return. In the artist’s words, “b.ALT.ica is about a virtual state or country, on the other side. It is about the line between the living and the dead world.”[1]. By means of a series of metaphors alluding to concepts of the last instants of life and accounts of near-death experiences,[2] the work establishes a correspondence between the passage from life to death (the “death rattle” when the dying person sees his life in flashback) and the entry into cyberspace.

The work, dedicated to the artist’s recently-deceased father, queries what remains of life when an individual leaves it. The symbolization of death is mainly concerned with life that persists, represented as an afterlife, attenuated or magnified, in all the notions of the hereafter: “(…) it is another life, a Life No.2, an ulterior life that takes over from the first one beyond the void of death”.[3] What does this supposed life after death look like, and how does it resemble or differ from real life, life before death?

How is it possible to convey life and the end of life simultaneously? In the environment of the Web, we feel that we continue to live in cyberspace, to move and make choices, that pieces of our lives can exist in it even if we are absent from the life that surrounds us, having torn ourselves away from the continuity of life to adopt a simulated life. In b.ALT.ica, we are told that we have arrived at the end and can “play the end,” knowing full well that our lives are not in danger. The procedure is more of a test, a try-out run.

Reaching the limit and going past the finish-line, we experience a breaking-off and are given the opportunity to simulate our own disappearance. Does the flickering mean that the system will shut down? The passage from light to darkness and vice-versa (but which side is the light actually on?) becomes an empty zone in which concealed paths can be taken. Like doors opening, icons lead into territories which correspond to fundamental aspects of life. What happens to love, language, individuality, communication, sexuality, politics, and art when earthly existence is over? Once these paths have been followed, however, there is nowhere else to go: each one leads to a dead end. Thus, after travelling through the archipelago of b.ALT.ica, we halt our journey because there is nothing left. Then we are faced with nothingness-infinite, inexpressible emptyness and silence.

TB: Can you comment a little bit on “b.ALT.ica”, which is to my knowledge your latest work…

IŠ: […] It is very hard for me to comment on b.ALT.ica. This project is dedicated to my father, because b.ALT.ica is the place where he lives now. It is the land at the end of time. Beyond it. And it is emotional. It is about relationship between the Communication and the Communism. About “Was ist Kunst?” and “Was ist nicht Kunst?”. About uncensored sky view, no-time zone, definition of net art, viruses, and the last mind game. About not hurting me, because every time you say goodbye, I die a little. And about where have all the flowers gone. That is b.ALT.ica and that is what’s on my mind all the time.

IŠ: b.ALT.ica is about a virtual state or country, on the other side. It is something about the line between a living and dead world. It is about what happens after death.

JB: But why call it ‘b.ALT.ica’ then?

IŠ: There is no logical explanation.

JB: Do you see the Baltics as a place of death?

IŠ: I have been there once, after I did the project. It is not meant as a real geographical place, but the word Baltica sounds to me like something which is not from this world. I did it in 1997, when my father died. I needed a place to put him there, somewhere. So that I would know where is he now. There. I chose Baltica because it sounded emotional to me, far away. Later, in Moscow, I discovered that a beer is called ‘Baltica’ –laughs–, and I bought it. They have a light version, and a normal one.

Drama.Body.Machine is a net.art project created on the invitation by Bojana Kunst, editor of the actual thematic part of Maska. For both artists this is a first joint project. Right part of the screen (created by Jaka Železnikar), explores the future, and left part of it (created by Igor Štromajer) explores the past of the relationship between man and machine and their pleasure. Both artists are using their characteristic and recognizable aesthetic which also gives them a coincidental completion.